sunday breakfast

The first thing you notice when you wake, even before you open your eyes, is vanilla.

There’s something comforting about waking to the aroma of home cooking. Swaddled in what smells like it might be pancakes, you decide not to even open your eyes. The sheets are rumpled beneath your body but the duvet is warm and snuggly on a morning that has turned down the temperature of the air to “cool”. You tuck yourself in and curl your arms around yourself.

So much of you now lies in the compass of your arms. You cuddle your own breasts and belly, and the lower arm barely reaches the opposite flank. You feel your own embrace sink luxuriously into warm flesh and wriggle your toes with pleasure. So. Comfy.

How long do you stay like that, holding yourself in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness? How long do you luxuriate in the memories of the day before?

The sound of cooking in the distance, so regular it faded into white noise, ceases in stages. A teaspoon clinks on the side of a cup. Then more sound: the stairs, carefully trodden, one-by-one so I must be carrying something heavy. Footsteps cross the landing and there’s a gentle knock at the door, as if I don’t know a waking Rey would hear me approaching.

“I,” begins my introductory speech, delivered backwards as I push the door open with my back. I turn around and through a crack between duvet and sheets you see I’m carrying a tray bearing a shiny metal dome. I continue: “Bought a cloche. Keep your food war— are you awake?”

A snuggly mound beneath warm blankets, you insist: “no.”

“Oh.” I approach and set down the tray. Vanilla joins with other smells, mild and meaty and salty and sweet. “Then I guess I’ll have to remove… This!”

The cloche rings like a dull tuning fork as it is listen to reveal three towering stacks of thick, American-style pancakes. They scarcely leave space on the platter for the syrups, butter, fruit, bacon and even sausages.

The duvet rustles as you fold it down your body and sit up.

“Oh good. You are awake!” I set your mug of tea down on the bedside table and lean over to kiss the crown of your head.

You don’t take your eyes off the tray. “I told you, if you feed me I’ll always come.”

When you’ve shuffled your curvy backside up the bed and are comfortably rested against the headboard you throw your arms into the air and make a gorgeous, bone-cracking stretch. Every muscle group gets its turn as you twist and lean. Your accompanying yawn is wide open. I lose time watching.

When you’re done you open your eyes to find me just about remembering to breathe.

“Good morning, my love.” The first forkful is fluffy and hot, its mild vanilla wholesomeness smoothered and made decadent by a resinous streak of sweet maple syrup and the salt bite of butter. You accept it with a sigh through your nostrils, nodding to let me know it’s good.

Just as well. You have something like twenty pairs of these pancakes to break your fast.

Chew. The surface bears the faintest hint of crispness, satisfying to your teeth. All is pulped and then swallowed, with the next forkful already waiting by your lips to experience the same fate. You open wide.

Your hunger is merely burnished by the first pair of pancakes. Your stomach has woken, as well, and speaks a low and steady note of bassy desire. You can feel the rumble rippling through your abdomen, like the wings of a butterfly deep inside you.

“You got in late. Sleep well?”

“Mmhmmm. This is a nice way to wake, though.”

I smile and, following your eye, prepare the next pair with sliced strawberry and blueberries, anointed with honey and cream. It’s subtle but so cute, the way your face turns to follow the first forkful. It slips within your mouth where the halved strawberry splits under your bite, yielding sweet pulp, cool against the warm pancake fluff.

Where the first round was relentlessly sweet, this is balanced, bright and fruity and sharp. I can tell you enjoy it—you eat so quickly! On one occasion there is no waiting forkful, and so on swallowing and finding no food you make your own. A brush of a nail on your left hand and blood flows in a straight single-file down my upper arm. Before it can drip and stain the bed you lean forward. The swipe of your tongue captures it entirely from running head all the way up to the source, upon which your lips close and from which you suck a couple of lazy coppery mouthfuls. They trickle down your throat like syrup.

When you sit back I’m blushing, and damn straight there’s a forkful waiting for you.

Next, sausages in isolation. Thank God I didn’t intend them as a topping! I hand you them skewered on a fork (the charred skin cracks when I pierce it) and then attend to your body. A hand placed in the centre of your chest like a greeting saunters down and strokes side-to-side, the loops growing until it takes an orbit around the whole of your belly.

Your tummy begins to feel it by the eighth round of pancakes. Banana you seemed to enjoy, though cherry and chocolate you absolutely wolfed down, so quickly I ran the risk of another wonderful bite and you gave yourself a brief bout of hiccups. The feel of your tummy contacting and wobbling beneath my touch made me laugh with delight. You shushed me with a burp like a rifle shot, though left me still grinning.

Ever tried bacon maple pancakes? You have now. Salt, sugar and fat combine to create feeling of excess that reads clear on your face. Your eyes close with every mouthful and between swallowing the last and receiving the next, your pupils dilate.

It’s indescribable watching you desire so much something I made.

By fifteen pancake rounds I’ve had to set aside the tray. You stretch again and arch your back to thrust forward your belly and breasts. It makes your body even more yielding beneath my soothing touch. Poor darling: I see the way you ease the pressure in small soft bouts. I start kissing your cheek for each.

Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Break to recover.

“You’re wonderful,” I murmur, stroking your cheek during a break and watching you watch me. Right now it looks like you’re considering biting me somewhere deep and permanent.

Nineteen. Break. And… Twenty.

I kiss your belly from solar plexus to crotch and back again. The groaning from within hints at the monstrous efforts your body is making in breaking down your oversized breakfast. It’s the most wonderful sound. You rub it gently in circles, seeming to evoke the sound in the wake of your motion.

Your eyes are half-lidded but you wear a smile. It’s not a breakfast strategy for a busy day, but on a relaxed and lazy Sunday, what could be more perfect? Everything else that happens will be a bonus.